The lazy days of summer are coming to a close, which means it’s time to start preparing your kid for a more scholarly mindset. Here are a few tips to get them out of lazy mode and ease the transition for both of you.

It’s much less stressful to get back into school mode if we do it gradually, instead of suddenly realizing “oh hell, school is tomorrow, the lunch bag is nowhere to be found, and your kid did zero of the three summer book reports due on the first day”. Even if you’re itching to finally get the kids out of the house and onto that school bus, a little preparation a week or two before school starts will start your family off on the right foot.

Start Adjusting the Sleep Schedule

Sleep is my biggest concern about this change. With a mostly open schedule all summer, both my daughter and myself have been waking up alarm-free. If we kept this up until the first day of school, my self-proclaimed night owl daughter would either get to school five hours late (no alarm) or have five hours of sleep deprivation (dragged out of bed and carried to school).

The most basic thing is to have your kids—and yourself, if necessary—go to sleep and get up a little earlier every day. WebMD advises inching back bedtime and wake times in half-hour increments:

Begin with a wake up time that is about an hour earlier than usual. For example, if your 6-year-old goes to bed at 9 p.m. during the summer and needs to get back to an 8 p.m. bedtime for school, begin by waking her up at 7 a.m. instead of letting her sleep until 8. Then try inching her bedtime back the next night to 8:30 p.m. On day two, wake her up at 6:30 a.m. and aim for an 8 p.m. bedtime.

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I’m using a short vacation before school to help with this. Waking up earlier is easier when there’s something fun to look forward to or get to (Wizarding World of Harry Potter, here we come!), but you could use fun activities at the end of summer vacation in the same way. Plus, hopefully the activities will wear them out so they naturally fall asleep earlier.

Get the School Supplies and Study Area in Order

Despite having spent about $60 in school supplies last year (not including clothing or other accessories like that), somehow we don’t have a single pencil in the house. My kid’s going to have to use broken crayons to do her schoolwork unless we start shopping. One good thing about shopping for school supplies, though, is you can bring your kids with you (or have them shop online with you) and use it as a reminder that school is approaching—and maybe even get them excited about it. Who doesn’t like bouquets of sharpened pencils? Even picking out a new backpack (if one is needed) can be exciting.

If you don’t have a homework area set up yet, or if it’s been overtaken with toys, now’s a good time to organize and personalize that area with your child. Hang a bulletin board up with the school calendar and room for other reminders, desk trays or folders for storing project work, and, of course, pencils and other writing tools.

Organizing expert Elizabeth Mayhew offers a few tips on Today.com for encouraging your kid to get organized:

First, establish your child’s organizational style. Like adults, most people fall into two categories: pilers (people who like to stack things) or filers (people who like to keep things out of sight). Allow your child to make some decisions about how he or she wants to organize their things and be sure to realize that your child might be wired differently from you; what works for him or her might not work for you.

Also, don’t be too rigid. You might find that once they start school, they need to change their systems. The goal is to empower them so they will be more likely to keep things in order.

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Pilers might prefer document boxes or trays while kid-friendly file folders should appeal to filers. Mayhew also recommends helping your child come up with a list of the things they need to bring to school each day of the week (e.g., books or soccer equipment) to check off as they pack their backpacks in the morning. Keep these running lists in a prominent place in their work area.

Finally, let’s talk clothing. The average spending on clothes and shoes as part of the back-to-school budget is over $350. August is a great time for buying kids’ clothing, thanks to the sales, but besides picking out the first week’s outfits and making sure shoes fit, I prefer to spread out clothing buying throughout the year. If you and your kids enjoy clothing shopping, though, new school-appropriate clothes can also help set the tone. Whether you decide to shop for new school clothes or not, this is as good a time as any to clean out the closet.

Work on Homework-Like Projects for the Rest of the Summer

Even if your child has been reading throughout the summer or doing other educational activities (like math camp), make sure he or she keeps it up during the last few days.

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Many schools have reading lists and book reports due on the first day of school. Working on those towards the end of summer can help them transition into school mode. If your school doesn’t require these or if the reports already done, check your local library and other resources (such as Education.com, DIY.org, or Edutopia.org) for projects you can do daily to reinforce that learning mode. While you might not necessarily want to assign “homework” during summer and kill the last few days of joy, there are plenty of fun ways to get kids into a more productive learning mindset—even if they’re just fun video games.

One project I’m working on with my daughter is organizing and reviewing her prior school years’ work, with a “School Memory Bank” like the one below from IHeartOrganizing. For one, it helps to clear out the school clutter from last year that’s still hanging around, but more importantly I think it will help her remember what she learned last year and possibly look forward to the new school year.

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Get Ready for Lunch Packing Again

One of the nicest things about open schedules in summer: not having to pack lunch bags. Oh well, back to creating snack packs, loading up on juice boxes, and the rest of the lunch bag grind.

For all of the above, older kids should have more autonomy and responsibility. Give them an allowance for the back-to-school supplies and clothing so they can budget themselves, have them think about extra-curricular activities they’re going to join, and talk with them about what they’re looking forward to about the new school year and what their specific goals for it are.

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The most important thing is to have kids—and yourself—thinking about and looking forward to the new routine and school year, rather than our natural tendency: living in denial that summer is ending and it’s time to get back to schoolwork.